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NACLA 48-2 Luis Duno Gottberg
NACLA 48-2 Luis Duno Gottberg
LUIS DUNO-GOTTBERG
Santiago de Cuba. 2015. A butcher shop at Mercado La Plaza. The Kingdom of This World (1949), one of Cuban
author Alejo Carpentier’s best-known novels, narrates the turmoil in Haiti following the French Revolution. Its
central character, a slave named Ti Noël, connects a series of historical events and figures, pointing to a common
thread of Caribbean rebellion through several centuries. In one of the most powerful scenes of the novel, a slave
conceives of the idea of violent transformation by establishing analogies (“amusing coincidence”) between the
head of the Master, heads of mannequins, and the chopped heads of calves at the butcher shop. My visit to a meat
market in Santiago de Cuba in 2015 triggered the memory of that passage, as well as questions abut the nature of
transition currently underway in contemporary Cuba.
“While his master was being shaved, Ti Noël could gaze to the tripe-shop the bookseller had hung on a wire with
his fill at the four wax heads that adorned the counter by clothespins the latest prints received from Paris. At least
the door. The curls of the wigs, opening into a pool of ring- four of them displayed the face of the King of France in a
lets on the red baize, framed expressionless faces. Those border of suns, swords and laurels… But Ti Noël’s atten-
heads seemed as real—although their fixed stare was so tion was attracted at that moment by a copper engraving,
dead—as the talking head an itinerant mountebank had the last of the series, which differed from the others in sub-
brought to the Cap years before to promote the sale of an ject and treatment. It represented a kind of French admiral
elixir for curing toothache and rheumatism. By an amus- or ambassador received by a Negro framed by feather fans
ing coincidence, in the window of the tripe-shop next door and seated upon a throne adorned with figures of monkeys
there were calves’ heads, skinned and each with a sprig of and lizards.”
parsley across the tongue, which possessed the same waxy
quality… The morning was rampant with heads, for next -Alejo Carpentier, Kingdom of This World (1949).
NACLA Report on the Americas, 2016, Vol. 48, No. 2, 2-3, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10714839.2016.1170287 191
© 2016 North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA)
Havana. February 2015. An overturned car by the
U.S. Interests Section. In 1961, President Dwight
D. Eisenhower severed relations with Cuba,
following the Revolution of 1959. On July 1, 2015,
it was announced that, with the reestablishment of
diplomatic ties, the United States Interests Section in
Havana would resume its role as the U.S. Embassy in
Cuba. As of now, the rapprochement sounds more like
a counterpoint, although enthusiasm on the island is
high. This picture, taken early in the morning on a day
in February 2015, comes across as a puzzling sign of
the current times: an old American car overturned in
front of the then U.S. Interests Section.
Old Havana. March 2016. Dreaming in Cuban. The progressive liberalization of diverse
sectors of the Cuban economy has been followed by the emergence of a new entrepreneurial
and middle class on the island. In this context, the work of artists Yulier P. and Fabian (2+2=5)
has embraced street underground culture and given expression to the anxieties and aspirations
of Cuban youth, who are struggling to navigate a new social and economic landscape. It is
up to them to negotiate or balance competing theses: the erosion of the socialist model, the
gradual restoration of capitalism coexisting in the public sphere, and the official discourse
that Cuba’s socialist experiment could use capitalist tools to develop a new economic model.
This example of street art comments on the social effects of that readjustment: Might the “New
Man” dream new dreams?